If you’re a US citizen there can be major benefits to registering your images with the Copyright office. Basically if you discover someone using your images without paying for them, and you’ve registered them, you are in a much better position to collect. Technically you own the copyright on the images once you take the picture, but the amount you can collect for illegal usage is much less if you don't register them. For more details on the whys of registering your images, check out Carolyn Wright’s site (www.photoattorney.com.)

Registering images has been one of those tasks that I put on the back burner. But that’s a problem because it’s far easier to register unpublished images. So by not registering in a timely fashion, I tend to use older pics to illustrate teaching materials and such. I finally sat down this weekend and began the overwhelming task of going through my images and deciding what to register. I developed a system using Aperture that really makes it not such a hideous task.

First I created a keyword button called register. Then I went through the images in the project and clicked the button for each image I want to register. I know that means it’s attached to all my images, but I don’t really think it’s an issue and it’s easy enough to remove it if I decide it’s a problem. In fact, I think it's preferable because I can tell at a glance if I've registered an image. Some people simply choose all their images with a certain rating to register.

Next I created a Smart Album based on the keyword “register.” Then I selected New > Album and made a regular album called Register. That way if I remove the keyword, I’ll still know which images were registered.

Then I exported small JPEGs to a unique folder for each project. I repeated the process for each project. Then I zipped each folder. It’s helpful to do it this way, rather than having just one huge folder for all the images you want to register from numerous projects, because the uploader from the copyright office times out. Initially I had zipped a master folder containing all the subfolders. It indicated it would take 50+ minutes and created an error. But by zipping each folder individually and then specifying them in the upload window, it took a total of about 5 minutes. Go figure.

The government copyright office now prefers digital uploads when possible, which makes the the process less cumbersome. Go to the copyright registration site and just fill in the information. The tutorial they offer is very clear and helps when you’re not quite sure what they’re asking.

While you’re reading this blog, I’m in London for the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year ceremonies . I am fortunate enough to have been awarded a Highly Commended in the 2008 contest. This year there were over 32,000 entries from 83 countries! The images are absolutely amazing and I’m quite honored. My winning image is the one I've posted with the blog.